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Journal of Spinoza Studies, 2023

The papers that Jean-Marie Beyssade dedicated to the work of Baruch Spinoza have recently been published under the title Études sur Spinoza. This review offers a general overview of the volume and a summary of some of the papers highlighting their underlying continuity by emphasizing Beyssade's methodological approach and his interpretative preoccupation with the problem of ethical salvation in the Ethics.

2018

The Mechanical Philosophy of Spinoza • Following Paolo Rossi’s definition of mechanical philosophy, this paper aims to prove that mechanism is the only possible model of natural philosophy for Spinoza. First, I discuss Spinoza’s theory of matter, that is, nothing but a system of matter in motion ruled by eternal laws. Then, I consider the meaning of ‘law’ in Spinoza’s philosophy. A law expresses a logical content; a logical content is always a necessary content. What for humans has a sufficient reason, becomes a divine absolute reason. Thus, the laws of nature are the expression of a logical model, which is underpinned by the field of mathematics’ truths. Then, I deal with the hardest issues for a mechanist interpretation of Spinoza’s natural philosophy, that is, conatus and final causes. In Spinoza’s philosophy, not only do final causes lack any epistemological explanation, but they are also impossible, because of the logical structure of the concept of substance. Regarding conatus, I show that it can be understood as something always resulting from a determination (conatus seu dispositio) and never as what determines something. Understood in such a way, the deep reality of conatus is not an undetermined power to cause something. On the contrary, conatus is always the effect of a determination. In purely mechanistic terms, conatus can be conceived as a geometrical-mechanical form, or essence, which complies with a certain logic of development. In the conclusion of this work I deal with some problems regarding Descartes’ and Spinoza’s physics – above all, the shared claim that any variation proceeds always by a stronger force. Not only does this assumption undermine a true relativistic vision of motion, but it also prevents a genuine knowledge of the notion of ‘rest’ as a measure for the same kind of movement, as Galilei before, and Huygens after understood it.

Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 2016

Scholars recognize Spinoza’s conatus doctrine as one of the most important features of the Ethics. In this paper, I investigate two rather neglected aspects of this doctrine, namely, the notion of “transition of perfection” and its moral consequences. I argue that both aspects originate from significant changes in Spinoza’s thought from the positions held in his early writings. To support this claim, I focus on how Spinoza discusses these points in his correspondence with Willem van Blijenbergh (1664-1665). In his letters, Spinoza denies the reality of transitions of perfection, while such transitions will become a key feature of his later account of affects. Moreover, Spinoza subscribes to a kind of ethical intellectualism that he later rejects in his mature version of the Ethics. I conclude that the first draft of the Ethics mentioned in 1665 to van Blijenbergh must have been rather different from its definitive version.

Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1986

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2016

2013

in Charles Ramond and Jack Stetter (eds.), Spinoza in 21st-Century French and American Philosophy. Bloomsbury, 2019

The two manuscripts of the Korte Verhandeling that were discovered in the mid-nineteenth century contain two appendices. These appendices are even more enigmatic than the KV itself, and it is the first appendix that is the subject of this study. Unfortunately, there are very few studies of this text, and its precise nature seems to be still in question after more than a century and a half of scholarship. It is commonly assumed that the appendices were written after the body of the KV and I am not going to challenge this assumption. The first appendix is written in a geometric manner, and it contains seven axioms and four propositions. Strikingly, it does not include any definitions. This is in sharp contrast with Spinoza's Ethics and his 1663 book on Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, which are similarly written in a geometric manner but include both definitions and axioms. One could perhaps suspect that the text we currently have is merely a fragment from a more extensive work which included definitions. In my paper, I will show that this is not the case, and that the first appendix belongs to a genuine work of Spinoza that never contained definitions. I would further argue that the first appendix is most probably the earliest draft we currently have of Spinoza's magnum opus, the Ethics, but we have a long way to go before we reach that conclusion. I will conclude with a very brief discussion of the value of axiomatization in metaphilosophy.